Let me start by saying I, and most of my family, are HUGE fans of Turkey Hill Tea. It’s rare that our households are without it. HOWEVER, I recently started drinking Rutter’s Sweet Tea and MY GOD it’s delicious. I’m sure it’s been out forever, but I was too busy with Turkey Hill Tea to notice. If you never had it, go get yourself some. If there is no Rutter’s in your area, get your ass to PA and get some!

I was giving Max a bath tonight and when I pulled him out of the tub and dried his hair, he looked just like me as a baby. I went through a bin of old photos and misc. memories my mom saved over the years. Check out the comparison. Almost scary. Click the pic to view a larger version.

I just finished watching Kevin Smith: To Fat for 40 on Netflix (loved it, naturally). I am a big, big fan of Kevin Smith. So much in fact that I had a dream about him last night…sort of.

I imagine if I told him this in person he would jump to a statement of us “sucking coooooooock” or something of that nature. The dream however involved me going back through time to a hockey game. In the stadium of the game, there was a house tucked away under the stadium seating and in this house is a new born Kevin Smith with his parents. I sat down with him and did baby talk to him when a friend of mine (can’t recall who) asked what I was doing and I turned and go, “I’m meeting Kevin Smith…AS A BABY” and I start crying. This crying was so powerful that I was crying as I woke up. Wasn’t balls out crying, but one of those cries where you get the knot in your throat and the tears just flow slowly from your eyes.

Why share this? Well I feel the way Wayne Gretzky impacted Kevin is the way Kevin impacted me. I got my first serving of Mr. Smith when Clerks came out on VHS and my mother rented it from Blockbuster. At the time I dismissed it as it was in black and white and I was only 11. My mom however was really into it and she’s been a big Kevin Smith fan as well. My next dose of Kevin Smith was Mallrats and at that point, I was hooked and have been since. I went back and watched Clerks and finally got the dialogue based jokes and my profanity level increase a shit-ton. I followed him the best I could as a teenager. Me and my friends would watch and quote Dogma all the time when I was in high school.

When I was 16, I got my first job at Weis Markets and met Mike. Mike also turned out to be a Kevin Smith fan and Kevin’s success from indie film maker to full-time director/actor/entrepreneur is what drove us to begin writing comedy skits which eventually turned into BangBoomCrash.com.

While Mike’s love for Kevin Smith stops around his movies, mine does not. I eventually quit Weis Markets and got a job at Blockbuster and dove deep into all things movies. While working there, An Evening with Kevin Smith was released. One of the perks of working at Blockbuster (at that time) was getting the movies before they hit the shelves. I nabbed up Evening With and watched Kevin for the first time speak as himself and was blown away. The way he tells his stories, the level of detail and the fucking humor packed into it pushed him up to God like levels to me (and I’m sure I’m not alone).

As a guy from York, PA with not much disposable income, I continued my best to stay within the Kevin Smith loop and goings ons. Watching all his movies (and YES, I fucking liked Jersey Girl), buying Clerks: The Animated Series, Q&A DVDs and chatting him up with my Ma.

YEARS later my mom calls and says Kevin Smith is coming to York, PA doing something called Live Nude SModcast at the Pullo Center on April 26th, 2010. Not hearing a SModcast before this (as I had no idea was a fucking podcast was), we go. Mom nabs up some tickets and the man I’ve idolized and who has impacted my sense of humor to the millionth degree is 3 rows of seats away from me. I hoot and holler as he comes out with knot in my throat and tears rolling down my face as my hero is right fucking there.

We leave after the show and I discover the SModcast podcast network. Now, like a gazillion others, I get to be as close to Kevin Smith as possible for damn near 7 days a week (as there are “so many to choose from”). After catching up on the SModcast, I now live every day thinking at least once a day, “I should have went to film school!”

A few months after the SModcast in York, I created a Twitter account (now deleted) and my hero responds to a tweet that I posted asking about this Scott Mosier blog (which turns out to be a fake blog). I felt important for a mere few minutes that he acknowledged my presence…then he fucking Rick Roll’d me.

Now following him, I badly want to attend a Red State Tour event. I sent emails to both The Strand Capital and Pullo Center in York, PA. Strand Capital said no and didn’t hear back from the Pullo Center. I hope they come somewhat close to York, PA.

So why this long ass post? I mainly wanted to document my love for this man and what he means to me. As gay as it sounds, I genuinely get excited (sometimes over excited) when anything Kevin Smith related is in my presence. Whether it’s watching To Fat for 40 on Netflix, listening to SModcast in the car or the wife telling me a story she saw on PerezHilton, I am always interested in anything he is doing. I fully support him as much as I can. I really hope this vision for what he calls Indie Film 2.0 takes off. I’ll support it the best I can and with however much money I can spare.

Thank you so much for everything Kevin and look forward to everything else. Thanks again and hope all is well (pshhhh, like you’re going to fucking read this…)

The other day, one of the kids decided to tear some photos out of our wedding album. In the the destruction I found these two pictures. They feature myself, Planet X Comics shop owner Tim Fling and musical talent Justin Orr.

At the wedding, both Tim and Justin requested “It’s Raining Men” from the DJ and thought they would come up and dance with me in hopes that it would embarrass me. Little did they know I do not embarrass easily. I just went with the flow and pulled out the best dance moves an overweight white man can.

My favorite part of these photos is Tim’s famous Phantom of the Opera dance moves in the first picture.

My son Max has been in love with Katy Perry for going on almost 1/2 a year. A few months back all he wanted to watch was California Girls and Teenage Dream on our DVR (thanks to Fuse OnDemand). His love for Katy Perry is so bad that Omi bought him a copy of Maxim which Katy Perry is on the cover.

Well I fired up the camera tonight while Max danced and sang along with Firework while it was playing. After getting mad views on his It Ain’t Kosh video, I think Max might become a 2-year old internet phenom.

So FX is by far my favorite TV channel. Since Sons of Anarchy is gone till next year and Rescue Me is not due back till summer, I’ve been hurtin for a new show. Lights Out is that show and i wrote up a review for it over at BrainResidue.com. Go read it now!!!

So there is a YouTuber out there named SteffComedy who makes these righteous videos using his own original music and clips of Jake and Amir and other various CollegeHumor Originals. He blends them together in some sort of Awesome-Machine-A-Majig which outputs totally entertaining and re-watchable videos. I am a big fan of his and I constantly watch his videos. So much so that Max watches them with me and has a favorite titled “It Ain’t Kosh“. Below is a video of Max enjoying said video.

The other day, when taking down our Christmas lights, I noticed an add amount of birds hanging out in the front of our house. So I grabbed our camera to film it but around the 10 second mark, something spooks them and they fly away…

I recently just got my yearly car inspection/emissions testing done. For all my automobile needs, I take my car to Fadely’s Auto Masters on Market Street in York, PA. I started going there because:
A.) they are a few blocks away from my house and
B.) a good friend of mine, Chris Aspey recommended them.

However, they became the best when I realized that every time they work on my car, they leave a snack in the car when I go to pick it up. Once it was Martin’s chips and this year, it was peanut butter crackers. Either they do this for everyone or they just know I’m fat and I’ll eat’em

They have always done good work for me and they leave snacks in your car. What more could you want!?

I wrote a new article over at BrainResidue.com. After hearing about Facebook’s CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg being names “Person of the Year” by Time Magazine, I got to thinking, “well…who was rejected as person of the year?” So I did a little research and here they are.